Why you are a bad internet marketer if you don’t know what’s planking

First thing first, this post is certainly not in favor of planking, in fact, the post is not about planking by any means. And sorry to break it to you but “Planking” is not some new link building tactic either, it is actually the age old internet meme previously known as the “lying down game”, which has been the talk of cyber town after an Australian guy lost his life while trying to plank (and the more bizarre part is that this practice has gained more momentum afterwards).

Planking is yet another craze, fueled by, none other than our very own Internet (Facebook to be more precise) and it’s all about lying face down, preferably at some public (or any other absurd place), taking a photo and sharing it with others on social network. While some of these plankers actually choose an interesting place or angle, the practice in itself, is as pointless as any other meme (and at times quite unsafe). But regardless of how pointless or inane an Internet craze sounds, for a marketer, that actually shows how much buzz and free publicity can a seemingly pointless but smartly triggered trend or viral content can create for your business, remember people dancing at apple stores? Oh and talking of Apple, their are images of some of Apple employees doing planking.

So, what propels me to make this ludicrous claim that an internet marketer, who’s not aware of this weird meme is not good at his/her jobs? Well, despite being a little overbroad, the title is actually not wide off the mark, because it highlights the importance of staying acquainted with each and every “in thing” at cyber world, especially those which are getting popular amongst your targeted consumers.

Being a marketer, one has to be aware of how these Internet trends and fads work, because it can help a great deal in developing viral marketing or link bait campaigns. Once you are able to asses as to what attracts people’s attention and what doesn’t, you can come up with much better content, videos, and advertisements.

Let’s take a look at how this knowledge can help in different phases of Internet Marketing.

Content Creation

Web has its own language, or dialect, and when you are writing content for the web, you have got to keep this distinction in mind, or your content will fall flat. While creating content, you’ve got to keep in mind things like what makes an internet user click at a link, what grabs their attention when they are quickly scanning through the pages, what makes them stop and comment, things like that will help you create the content that stick out and do the job.

Link Building

With each passing day, and with each impending update in Google’s algorithm, link building is becoming more and more difficult. Slowly but surely, all of those easy and bulk link-building methods are losing their worth, link building is certainly not a copy-paste job, marketers need to select target websites carefully, then analyze each of these short listed targets and think of appropriate ways to approach the webmasters, and acquire a link to your website. No matter how good and deserving is your website, a lot will depend on how you engage the webmasters, try contacting them with a make-shift template and they will instantly discard your message as spam. The internet marketer or SEO professional needs to be internet savvy to be able to realize the nuisance of spam and how to go around all of these hurdles, and win a back link for his/her website, which is well worth the effort.

Product Development

Internet started as a quick and relatively inexpensive mode of communication, it slowly transformed into an information hub and also an entertainment source, and now it is slowly becoming the place to do business. Being the internet marketer you need to keep an eye on all of these developments, trends, and how the online consumer behavior and overall culture is taking shape, only then you will be able to develop appropriate products for your online business.

Comments

To an extent you do have to keep up with what the buzz on the net is, and whats trending. I know there are some famous youtubers out there who make their money and attract massive amounts of views to their youtube videos all in less than 24 hours, and it is solely based on whats trending.

Hi Arba,
Content is King, as everyone knows, therefore, must you create many good sites with good titles with key words, long tail, H1, H2, etc. Make blog comments on other blogs, guest blogging. If you do this you will get pretty far with your site or blog.

Most blogs have a “nofollow” attribute on comment links, which means it brings little-to-none benefit SEO wise (especially on Google). It might help you to get some exposures though, and a chance to network with other webmasters.

You need to find blogs that give Dofollow juice (for commenting) if that’s what you are aiming – and remember to make good quality comments even in that case. Alternatively, guest blogging is a decent way to build links if you have the time to contribute articles to various related sites.

Also, some blogs (including Myblog2day) have a Top Commentator plugin with “dofollow” links for the top few commentators, it might worth the effort if you don’t have any better ideas.

Hi Nomad,
Well said on the blog commenting part. I agree that blog commenting and guest posting are great ways to build quality links.
I’m glad I’m not an internet marketer by profession, as I don’t have any idea about planking! :)

Link building strategies are not shady anymore specially after Google Panda was introduced and those who practice low quality links really have to make some serious changes. Sites with low quality link building and poor quality content are getting stripped of, of its PR and this posts have just emphasized on all the valid points. Nice and enriching post!

From the not exceptionally thorough research I have conducted, it seems that “planking” involves taking a picture of oneself lying straight, stiff and facedown in an unusual place, then posting it online. Although it quite escaped my notice, apparently planking has been around in Australia for years—though so have cricket and Curtis Stone, and I never paid any attention to those, either.

I have also hared about planking but i really appreciate to you because really great work done by you well Internet marketing ties together the creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales.[4] Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along many different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, email marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies.

Google Panda certainly isnt taking any prisoners. Link builders are going to have to improve their techniques, as it is becoming increasingly more difficult these days, as im sure we are all the popular saying, content is king!

P.S. I dont think ive ever heard of “Planking” before, i must be getting old.